Smoking is an addiction, and it is highly correlated with poverty for a variety of reasons, some of which I'm sure you can find if you step off the personal responsibility high-horse for a moment.
So at what point are the individuals themselves responsible for their actions? Or is it addictions, poverty, and other external and unavoidable tragedies all the way down?
The point is when you're talking about large populations as a whole.
It's like the saying that if you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem, but if you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem.
Here, if one person is stuck in poverty because of poor life choices, they have a problem. If ten million people are stuck in poverty because of poor life choices, we all have a problem.
Rather than point fingers and talk about "responsibility" and all the rest, it would be much more useful to simply talk about why this happens (both internal and external reasons), what can be done to help, and whether those actions are worthwhile.
